Choruses from “The Rock”

By T.S. Elliot

Published in 1934, T.S. Eliot’s Choruses from “The Rock,” represents the choruses that Eliot wrote for The Rock, a verse pageant-play. The play, complete with music and dance, was performed at Sadler’s Wells Theatre from 28 May to 9 June 1934 in support of the Fund of the Diocese of London, an ecclesiastical charity that helped to preserve London’s older churches, as well as build new churches in growing areas. Eliot’s contributions to the play focus on the Church’s history, some aspects of its theology, its place in the modern world, and speculation as to what the future holds.

I

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,

The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

О perpetual revolution of configured stars,

О perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,

О world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

…

I journeyed to London, to the timekept City,

Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.

There I was told: we have too many churches,

And too few chop-houses. There I was told:

Let the vicars retire. Men do not need the Church

In the place where they work, but where they spend their

Sundays.

In the City, we need no bells:

Let them waken the suburbs.

I journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told:

We toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor

To Hindhead, or Maidenhead.

If the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers.

In industrial districts, there I was told

Of economic laws.

In the pleasant countryside, there it seemed

That the country now is only fit for picnics.

And the Church does not seem to be wanted

In country or in suburbs; and in the town

Only for important weddings.

…

Chorus Leader: Silence! and preserve respectful distance.

For I perceive approaching

The Rock. Who will perhaps answer our doubtings.

The Rock. The Watcher. The Stranger.

He who has seen what has happened.

And who sees what is to happen.

The Witness. The Critic. The Stranger.

The God-shaken, in whom is the truth inborn.

…

Enter the Rock, led by a Boy:

The Rock: The lot of man is ceaseless labour,

Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,

Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.

I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know

That it is hard to be really useful, resigning

The things that men count for happiness, seeking

The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting

With equal face those that bring ignominy,

The applause of all or the love of none.

All men are ready to invest their money

But most expect dividends.

I say to you: Make perfect your will.

I say: take no thought of the harvest,

But only of proper sowing.

The world turns and the world changes,

But one thing does not change.

In all of my years, one thing does not change.

However you disguise it, this thing does not change:

The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches;

The men you are in these times deride

What has been done of good, you find explanations

To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.

Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.

The desert is not remote in southern tropics,

The desert is not only around the corner,

The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you.

The desert is in the heart of your brother.

The good man is the builder, if he build what is good.

I will show you the things that are now being done,

And some of the things that were long ago done,

That you may take heart. Make perfect your will.

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

…

The lights fade; in the semi-darkness the voices of Workmen are

heard chanting.

In the vacant places

We will build with new bricks

There are hands and machines

And clay for new brick

And lime for new mortar

Where the bricks are fallen

We will build with new stone

Where the beams are rotten

We will build with new timbers

Where the word is unspoken

We will build with new speech

There is work together

A Church for all

And a job for each

Every man to his work.

…

Now а group of Workmen issilhouetted against the dim sky. From

farther away, they are answered by voices of the Unemployed.

Noman has hired us

With pocketed hands

And lowered faces

We stand about in open places

And shiver in unlit rooms.

Only the wind moves

Over empty fields, untilled

Where the plough rests, at an angle

To the furrow. In this land

There shall be one cigarette to two men,

To two women one half pint of bitter

Ale. In this land

No man has hired us.

Our life is unwelcome, our death

Unmentioned in “The Times.”

…

Chant of Workmen again.

The river flows, the seasons turn,

The sparrow and starling have no time to waste.

If men do not build

How shall they live?

When the field is tilled

And the wheat is bread

They shall not die in a shortened bed

And a narrow sheet. In this street

There is no beginning, no movement, no peace and no end

But noise without speech, food without taste.

Without delay, without haste

We would build the beginning and the end of this street.

We build the meaning:

A Church for all

And a job for each

Each man to his work.

II

Thus your fathers were made

Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of God, being built

upon the foundation

Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief corner­stone.

But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a

ruined house?

Where many are born to idleness, to frittered lives and squalid

deaths, embittered scorn in honey-hives,

And those who would build and restore turn out the palms of

their hands, or look in vain towards foreign lands for alms to

be more or the urn to be filled.

Your building not fitly framed together, you sit ashamed and

wonder whether and how you may be builded together for a

habitation of God in the Spirit, the Spirit which moved on

the face of the waters like a lantern set on the back of a

tortoise.

And some say: “How can we love our neighbour? For love must

be made real in act, as desire unites with desired; we have only

our labour to give and our labour is not required.

We wait on corners, with nothing to bring but the songs we can

sing which nobody wants to hear sung;

Waiting to be flung in the end, on a heap less useful than dung.”

You, have you built well, have you forgotten the cornerstone?

Talking of right relations of men, but not of relations of men

to God.

“Our citizenship is in Heaven”; yes, but that is the model and

type for your citizenship upon earth.

When your fathers fixed the place of God,

And settled all the inconvenient saints,

Apostles, martyrs, in a kind of Whipsnade,

Then they could set about imperial expansion

Accompanied by industrial development.

Exporting iron, coal and cotton goods

And intellectual enlightenment

And everything, including capital

And several versions of the Word of God:

The British race assured of a mission

Performed it, but left much at home unsure.

Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten

or ripe.

And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying.

and always being restored.

For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:

For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of God.

For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.

And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.

For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands

alone on the other side of death,

But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that

was done by those who have gone before you.

And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble

repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;

And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as

devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying

within and attacked from without;

For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while

there is time of prosperity

The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity

they will decry it.

What life have you if you have not life together?

There is no life that is not in community,

And no community not lived in praise of God.

Even the anchorite who meditates alone,

For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of God,

Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads.

And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour

Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,

But all dash to and fro in motor cars,

Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

Nor does the family even move about together.

But every son would have his motor cycle,

And daughters ride away on casual pillions.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore;

Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste;

Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone.

Let the fire not be quenched in the forge.

III

The Word of the Lord came unto me, saying:

О miserable cities of designing men,

O wretched generation of enlightened men,

Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities.

Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:

I have given you hands which you turn from worship,

I have given you speech, for endless palaver,

I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,

I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,

I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.

I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate

Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

Many are engaged in writing books and printing them.

Many desire to see their names in print.

Many read nothing but the race reports.

Much is your reading, but not the Word of God,

Much is your building, but not the House of God.

Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,

To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?

…

1st Male Voice: A Cry from the East:

What shall be done to the shore of smoky ships?

Will you leave my people forgetful and forgotten

To idleness, labour, and delirious stupor?

There shall be left the broken chimney,

The peeled hull, a pile of rusty iron.

In a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs,

Where My Word is unspoken.

…

2nd Male Voice: A Cry from the North, from the West and from

the South

Whence thousands travel daily to the timekept City;

Where My Word is unspoken,

In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels

The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,

The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,

And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:

Their only monument the asphalt road

And a thousand lost golf balls.”

…

Chorus: We build in vain unless the Lordbuild with us.

Can you keep the City that the Lordkeeps not with you?

A thousand policemen directing the traffic

Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots

Build better than they that build without the Lord.

Shall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?

I have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy

sanctuary,

I have swept the floors and garnished the altars.

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.

Though you have shelters and institutions,

Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid,

Subsiding basements where the rat breeds

Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors

Or a house a little better than your neighbour’s;

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?

Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”

What will you answer? “We all dwell together

To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?

And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.

О my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,

Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

О weariness of men who turn from God

To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,

To arts and inventions and daring enterprises.

To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited.

Binding the earth and the water to your service,

Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,

Dividing the stars into common and preferred.

Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,

Engaged in working out a rational morality,

Engaged in printing as many books as possible,

Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,

Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm

For nation or race or what you call humanity;

Though you forget the way to the Temple,

There is one who remembers the way to your door:

Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

You shall not deny the Stranger.

IV

There are those who would build the Temple,

And those who prefer that the Temples should not be built.

In the days of Nehemiah the Prophet

There was no exception to the general rule.

In Shushan the palace, in the month Nisan,

He served the wine to the King Artaxerxes,

And he grieved for the broken city, Jerusalem;

And the King gave him leave to depart

That he might rebuild the city.

So he went, with a few, to Jerusalem,

And there, by the dragon’s well, by the dung gate,

By the fountain gate, by the king’s pool,

Jerusalem lay waste, consumed with fire;

No place for a beast to pass.

There were enemies without to destroy him.

And spies and self-seekers within,

When he and his men laid their hands to rebuilding the wall.

So they built as men must build

With the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.

V

О Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and

impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and

desperately wicked.

Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem

the Arabian: were doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.

Preserve me from the enemy who has something to gain: and

from the friend who has something to lose.

Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: “The trowel

in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster.”

Those who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten: are like

snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in the sunlight.

And the others run about like dogs, full of enterprise, sniffing

and barking: they say, “This house is a nest of serpents, let us

destroy it,

And have done with these abominations, the turpitudes of the

Christians.” And these are not justified, nor the others.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted

for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and

dodging his emptiness.

If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the

home: and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.

The man who has builded during the day would return to his

hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of silence, and

doze before he sleeps.

But we are encompassed with snakes and dogs: therefore some

must labour, and others must hold the spears.

VI

It is hard for those who have never known persecution,

And who have never known a Christian,

To believe these tales of Christian persecution.

It is hard for those who live near a Bank

To doubt the security of their money.

It is hard for those who live near a Police Station

To believe in the triumph of violence.

Do you think that the Faith has conquered the World

And that lions no longer need keepers?

Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be?

Do you need to be told that even such modest attainments

As you can boast in the way of polite society

Will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their signifi-

cance?

Men! polish your teeth on rising and retiring;

Women! polish your fingernails:

You polish the tooth of the dog and the talon of the cat.

Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her

laws?

She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.

She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they

like to be soft.

She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.

They constantly try to escape

From the darkness outside and within

By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be

good.

But the man that is will shadow

The man that pretends to be.

And the Son of Man was not crucified once for all.

The blood of the martyrs not shed once for all,

The lives of the Saints not given once for all:

But the Son of Man is crucified always

And there shall be Martyrs and Saints.

And if blood of Martyrs is to flow on the steps

We must first build the steps;

And if the Temple is to be cast down

We must first build the Temple.

VII

In the beginning Godcreated the world. Waste and void. Waste

and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And when there were men, in their various ways, they struggled

in torment towards God

Blindly and vainly, for man is a vain thing, and man without

God is a seed upon the wind: driven this way and that, and

finding no place of lodgement and germination.

They followed the light and the shadow, and the light led them

forward to light and the shadow led them to darkness,

Worshipping snakes or trees, worshipping devils rather than

nothing: crying for life beyond life, for ecstasy not of the flesh.

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of

the deep.

And the Spirit moved upon the face of the water.

And men who turned towards the light and were known of the

light

Invented the Higher Religions; and the Higher Religions were

good

And led men from light to light, to knowledge of Good and Evil.

But their light was ever surrounded and shot with darkness

As the air of temperate seas is pierced by the still dead breath of

the Arctic Current;

And they came to an end, a dead end stirred with a flicker of life.

And they came to the withered ancient look of a child that has

died of starvation.

Prayer wheels, worship of the dead, denial of this world, affirma-

tion of rites with forgotten meanings

In the restless wind-whipped sand, or the hills where the wind

will not let the snow rest.

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of

the deep.

Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time

and of time,

A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:

transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time

but not like a moment of time,

A moment in time but time was made through that moment:

for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment

of time gave the meaning.

Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the

light of the Word,

Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative

being;

Bestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always before,

selfish and purblind as ever before.

Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their

march on the way that was lit by the light;

Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet fol-

lowing no other way.

But it seems that something has happened that has never hap-

­pened before: though we know not just when, or why, or

how, or where.

Men have left Godnot for other gods, they say, but for no god;

and this has never happened before

That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first

Reason,

And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race,

or Dialectic.

The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells up-

turned, what have we to do

But stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards

In an age which advances progressively backwards?

…

Voice of the Unemployed [afar off]:

In this land
There shall be one cigarette to two men,
To two women one half pint of bitter
Ale….

4. to strive to win a good lady’s ring and then to kiss and embrace her.

The quotes along my sidebar are advice from the gray hairs. They are bits of wisdom to be pondered. Each teaches life lessons that come with the advent of wisdom found mostly in our older brethren. We learn from our elders. We learn from the past. We must put all our trust in God to guide us to the truths of their wisdom and allow the Lord to lead us to the answers and to the questions.

Rise Up, O Men of God

1. Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and mind and soul and strength
to serve the King of kings.

2. Rise up, O men of God!
The kingdom tarries long.
Bring in the day of brotherhood
and end the night of wrong.

3. Rise up, O men of God!
The church for you doth wait,
her strength unequal to her task;
rise up, and make her great!

4. Lift high the cross of Christ!
Tread where his feet have trod.
As brothers of the Son of Man,
rise up, O men of God!

---William P. Merrill, 1867-1954

Brave Knights and Heroic Courage

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”
-CS Lewis

Humble

"No man has understanding if he is not humble, and he who lacks humility is devoid of understanding.
No man is humble if he is not peaceful, and he who is not peaceful is not humble. And no man is peaceful without rejoicing."
Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily Fifty-One

As We Grow Up

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let us down, probably will. You'll have your heart broken and you'll break others' hearts. You'll fight with your best friend or maybe even fall in love with them, and you'll cry because time is flying by. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, forgive freely, and love like you've never been hurt. Life comes with no guarantees, no time outs, no second chances. You just have to live life to the fullest, tell someone what they mean to you and tell someone off, speak out, dance in the pouring rain, hold someone's hand, comfort a friend, fall asleep watching the sun come up, stay up late, be a flirt, and smile until your face hurts. Don't be afraid to take chances or fall in love and most of all, live in the moment because every second you spend angry or upset is a second of happiness you can never get back.

- Unknown

What is Right, in a Nutshell

“Do nothing that you would not like God to see. Say nothing you would not like God to hear. Write nothing you would not like God to read. Go no place where you would not like God to find you. Read no book of which you would not like God to say, "Show it to Me."
Never spend your time in such a way that you would not like to have God say, "What are you doing?”
― J.C. Ryle

Understanding the Bible

“Be very sure of this,-people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it only too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment.”
― J.C. Ryle

Fabian Society

I also made it quite clear that socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under Socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.
---George Bernard Shaw Charter member of the Fabian Society-It is generally believed that Fabian socialist sought peaceable socialist objectives. Quote from: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. London: Constable, 1928. 470.↩

1942 Threat

We again warn our people in America of the constantly increasing threat against our inspired Constitution and our free institutions set up under it. The same political tenets and philosophies that have brought war and terror in other parts of the world are at work amongst us in America. The proponents thereof are seeking to undermine our own form of government and to set up instead one of the forms of dictatorship now flourishing in other lands. These revolutionists are using a technique that is as old as the human race — a fervid but false solicitude for the unfortunate over whom they thus gain mastery, and then enslave them. They suit their approaches to the particular group they seek to deceive . . . Latter-day Saints cannot be true to their faith and lend aid, encouragement, or sympathy to any of these false philosophies. They will prove snares to their feet.

--Read by President J. Reuben Clark, Jr. at the final session of the 112th Annual Conference, Monday, April 6, 1942, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wrote in part

Push Back

“Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”

-Flannery O’Connor

Time to Begin

“Too long have we been waiting for one another to begin! The time of waiting is past! The hour of God has struck! War is declared! In God’s Holy Name let us arise and build! ‘The God of Heaven, He will fight for us’, as we for Him. We will not build on the sand, but on the bedrock of the sayings of Christ, and the gates and minions of hell shall not prevail against us. Should such men as we fear? Before the world, yes, before the sleepy, lukewarm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world, we will dare to trust our God, we will venture our all for Him, we will live and we will die for Him, and we will do it with His joy unspeakable singing aloud in our hearts. We will a thousand times sooner die trusting only our God, than live trusting in the approval of man. And when we come to this position the battle is already won, and the end of the glorious campaign in sight. We will have the real Holiness of God, not the sickly stuff of talk and dainty words and pretty thoughts; we will have a Masculine Holiness, one of daring faith and works for Jesus Christ.”

(C.T. Studd, 1898)

Anyway

“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway…
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.”

― Mother Teresa

Back to Bondage

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.”

--Sometimes Attributed to Alexander Tytler

Socialism

"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."
---Norman Thomas

Men Who Know Their Religion

"I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it."

John Henry Newman

“Civilization Without Religion”

"What ails modern civilization? Fundamentally, our society’s affliction is the decay of religious belief. If a culture is to survive and flourish, it must not be severed from the religious vision out of which it arose. The high necessity of reflective men and women, then, is to labor for the restoration of religious teachings as a credible body of doctrine."

Russell Kirk, Lecture: "Civilization Without Religion"

Bible Study

Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning: Grant us to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ...

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart

Archives

Archives

Unbelief

“Unbelief is one of the commonest spiritual diseases in these latter days. It meets us at every turn, and in every company. Like the Egyptian plague of frogs, it makes its way into every family and home, and there seems no keeping it out. Among high and low, and rich and poor, in town and in country, in universities and manufacturing towns, in castles and in cottages, you will continually find some form of unbelief. It is no longer a pestilence which walks in darkness, but a destruction which wastes at noonday. Unbelief is even thought clever and intellectual, and a mark of a thoughtful mind. Society seems leavened with it. He who avows his belief of everything contained in the Bible, must make up his mind in many companies to be smiled at contemptuously, and thought an ignorant and weak man.”

– J.C. Ryle

Hell

I feel constrained to speak freely to my readers on the subject of hell. . . . I believe the time is come when it is a positive duty to speak plainly about the reality and eternity of hell. A flood of false doctrine has lately broken in upon us. Men are beginning to tell us “that God is too merciful to punish souls for ever—that there is a love of God lower even than hell—and that all mankind, however wicked and ungodly some of them may be, will sooner or later be saved.”. . . We are to embrace what is called a “kinder theology.”. . . Against such false teaching I desire, for one, to protest. Painful, sorrowful, distressing as the controversy may be, we must not blink it, or refuse to look the subject in the face. I, for one, am resolved to maintain the old position, and to assert the reality and eternity of hell.

---J.C. Ryle

True Valour

Who would true Valour see

Who would true Valour see
Let him come hither;
One here will Constant be,
Come Wind, come Weather.
There's no Discouragement,
Shall make him once Relent,
His first avow'd Intent,
To be a Pilgrim.

Who so beset him round,
With dismal Storys,
Do but themselves Confound;
His Strength the more is.
No Lyon can him fright,
He'l with a Gyant Fight,
But he will have a right,
To be a Pilgrim.

Hobgoblin, nor foul Fiend,
Can daunt his Spirit:
He knows, he at the end,
Shall Life Inherit.
Then Fancies fly away,
He'l fear not what men say,
He'l labour Night and Day,
To be a Pilgrim.

---John Bunyan

Transcending All Knowledge

I entered into unknowing,
and there I remained unknowing
transcending all knowledge.

1

I entered into unknowing,
yet when I saw myself there,
without knowing where I was,
I understood great things;
I will not say what I felt
for I remained in unknowing
transcending all knowledge.

2

That perfect knowledge
was of peace and holiness
held at no remove
in profound solitude;
it was something so secret
that I was left stammering,
transcending all knowledge.

3

I was so 'whelmed,
so absorbed and withdrawn,
that my senses were left
deprived of all their sensing,
and my spirit was given
an understanding while not understanding,
transcending all knowledge.

4

He who truly arrives there
cuts free from himself;
all that he knew before
now seems worthless,
and his knowledge so soars
that he is left in unknowing
transcending all knowledge.

5

The higher he ascends
the less he understands,
because the cloud is dark
which lit up the night;
whoever knows this
remains always in unknowing
transcending all knowledge.

6

This knowledge in unknowing
is so overwhelming
that wise men disputing
can never overthrow it,
for their knowledge does not reach
to the understanding of not
understanding,
transcending all knowledge.

7

And this supreme knowledge
is so exalted
that no power of man or learning
can grasp it;
he who masters himself
will, with knowledge in
unknowing,
always be transcending.

8

And if you should want to hear:
this highest knowledge lies
in the loftiest sense
of the essence of God;
this is a work of his mercy,
to leave one without
understanding,
transcending all knowledge.

~Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591)

Give Me Liberty

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Patrick Henry

Daily quote for 9/11

Stir us Lord

Disturb us Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us Lord, when with the abundance of the things we possess we have lost the thirst for the water of life. Stir us Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery, where losing sight of land we will find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hope, and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope and love. Amen.
(Attributed -Sir Francis Drake, 1577)

Adam vs. son of man

The first man turned away from God in a garden
The Son of Man turned to God in a garden

The first man brought thorns
The Son of Man wore a crown of thorns

The first man was naked and ashamed
The Son of Man was stripped naked and bore our shame

The first man sinned at a tree
The Son of Man bore our sins on a tree

Hallelujah!
Author Unknown

Thugs and Appeasers

The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.
Ayn Rand, The Objectivist

Human Scale

"I am calling for an end to giantism, for a return to the human scale—the scale that human beings can understand and cope with; the scale of the local fraternal lodge, the church congregation, the block club, the farm bureau. It is the locally owned factory, the small businessman who personally deals with his customers and stands behind his product, the farm and consumer cooperative, the town or neighborhood. . . . It is this activity on a small, human scale that creates the fabric of community, a framework for the creation of abundance and liberty. The human scale nurtures standards of right behavior, a prevailing ethic of what is right and what is wrong, acceptable and unacceptable."
Ronald Reagan

Moral Imagination

The Book of Proverbs declares, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Where there is no real moral imagination, itself a form of vision, the people will become captives of corrupt and corrupting imaginations, for while imagination as such may be an innate human capacity, it needs proper nurture and cultivation. If the tea rose is not properly attended, it withers, and the thistle grows in its place. If the moral imagination is not fed by religious sentiment and supported by reason, it will wither and be replaced by the corrupt forms of imagination.

Life

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let us down, probably will. You'll have your heart broken and you'll break others' hearts. You'll fight with your best friend or maybe even fall in love with them, and you'll cry because time is flying by. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, forgive freely, and love like you've never been hurt. Life comes with no guarantees, no time outs, no second chances. You just have to live life to the fullest, tell someone what they mean to you and tell someone off, speak out, dance in the pouring rain, hold someone's hand, comfort a friend, fall asleep watching the sun come up, stay up late, be a flirt, and smile until your face hurts. Don't be afraid to take chances or fall in love and most of all, live in the moment because every second you spend angry or upset is a second of happiness you can never get back.

- Unknown

Unclench Your Fists

"Each time you dare to let go and surrender one of those many fears, your hand opens a little and your palms spread out in a gesture of receiving. You must be patient, of course, very patient, until your hands are completely open. "
--Henri J.M. Nouwen

Hold onto God’s Hand

"I was with God, and I was with the devil, But God won, I held onto God's hand, the best hand, and at no point in time... did I doubt that God wouldn't get me out of there."
- The first words of Mario Sepulveda, Chilean mine worker, to journalists after his rescue 2300 feet under the earth; the longest underground entrapment in human history.

Morality and Exclusion of Religious Principle

“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

--George Washington, Farewell Address,1796

SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON

Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

Prayer

-A POEM-

I ask good things that I detest,
With speeches fair;
Heed not, I pray Thee, Lord, my breast,
But hear my prayer.

I say ill things I would not say -
Things unaware:
Regard my breast, Lord, in Thy day,
And not my prayer.

O let my thoughts abide in Thee
Lest I should fall:
Show me Thyself in all I see,
Thou Lord of all.

--Robert Louis Stevenson

WHAT WE OBTAIN TO CHEAP, WE ESTEEM TO LIGHTLY

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."

-- Thomas Paine, “The Crisis”, December 23rd, 1776

TO PRAY IS TO LIVE

"Maybe someone will say to you, "You have to forgive yourself." But that isn't possible. What is possible is to open your hands without fear, so the One who loves you can blow your sins away. Then the coins you considered indispensable for your life prove to be little more than light dust which a soft breeze will whirl away, leaving only a grin or a chuckle behind. Then you feel a bit of new freedom, and praying becomes a joy, a spontaneous reaction to the world and the people around you. Praying then becomes effortless, inspired and lively, or peaceful and quiet. Then you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer. Then you gradually realize that to pray is to live."

--Henri J. M. Nouwen

BIRTH

God gives birth to the Son as you, as me, as each one of us. As many beings as many gods in God.

In my soul, God not only gives birth to me as his son, he gives birth to me as himself, and himself as me. I find in this divine birth that God and I are the same. I am what I was and what shall always remain, now and forever. I am transported above the highest angels; I neither decrease nor increase, for in this birth I have become the motionless cause of all that moves. I have won back what has always been mine. Here, in my own soul, the greatest of all miracles has taken place---God has returned to God!

--Meister Eckhart

HAPPINESS AND JOY

"It is a privilege to be a part of the ongoing realm of existing things and processes. When we see and conceive of ourselves as a part of those ongoing processes, we identify with the totality and, in the calmness this brings, feel solidarity with all our comrades in existing.

We want nothing other than to live in a spiral of activities and enhance others' doing so, deepening our own reality as we come into contact and relation with the rest, exploring the dimensions of reality, embodying them in ourselves, creating, responding to the full range of the reality we can discern with the fullest reality we possess, becoming a vehicle for truth, beauty, goodness, and holiness, adding our own characteristic bit to reality's eternal processes. And that wanting of nothing else, along with its attendant emotion, is---by the way---what constitutes happiness and joy."
---Robert Nozik, The Examined Life

His Kingdom is Forever

And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us;
The prince of darkness grim,
we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers,
No thanks to them, abideth,
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through Him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go,
This Mortal Life also;
The body they may kill;
God's truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
---Martin Luther

“This is the Truth”

An American TV journalist interviewed a group of children from a Sunday school in southern Sudan where Arab Muslims regularly raided their village and slaughtered Christians. Many of their relatives had already been killed.

The journalist asked, "Would you turn to Islam? Or would you prefer to die for Christ? If so, Why?

They replied, "We will remain Christians because this is the truth." As they spoke, their faces seemed to glow with light just like Stephen, Christianities first martyr, whose face "was like that of an angel"

Group of children ,Sudan, 1993
from the book, "Jesus Freaks"

Omnipotent Moral Busybodies

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

— C.S. Lewis

The Need of Secure Moral Identities

…Republics of the American type depend upon citizens who maintain a firm understanding of certain foundational ideas – “a frequent recurrence to first principles,” as various of our framers put it. They simultaneously depend upon citizens who maintain a certain rigorous moral character, citizens well aware of things the law permits them to do but which on account of their own moral commitments they will not do: they will not lie, nor betray their friends, nor abandon their stated moral principles, nor shirk their duties. They will try to live worthy of the freedom endowed in their own souls, and entrusted to their own responsibility – inalienably. One of the foundational principles required for the survival of republics is the clear recognition that there is enough good in human beings to allow republics to work, and also enough evil in human beings to make republics necessary. In one dimension, republics depend on the ability of citizens to trust one another to hold firm to moral principles.In another dimension, republics dare not trust in perfect moral probity, for every man sometimes sins against his own principles, and for this basic reason all public powers must be divided, and all exercises of public power in the republic must be checked and balanced by other powers, as well as by other auxiliary methods. “In God we trust,” yes, but for all human beings there must be checks and balances…

By Michael Novak

Good Intentions

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of power. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."

-- Daniel Webster, as quoted in Hearings on the confirmation of Abe Fortas to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court, p. 108

The Last Will Be First

You've seen a herd of goats
going down to the water.

The lame and dreamy goat
brings up the rear.

There are worried faces about that one,
but ah, now they're laughing, because look,

as they return,
that goat is the leader!

There are many different kinds of knowing.
The lame goat's kind is a branch
that traces back to the roots of Presence.

Learn from the lame goat,
and lead the herd Home.
--Rumi

Truth

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
--George Orwell

prayer, number 20

in "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"

I am come by thy goodness, to the use of thine ordinary means for my body, to wash away those peccant humours, that endangered it. I have, O Lord, a River in my body, but a Sea in my soul, and a Sea swollen into the depth of a Deluge, above the sea. Thou hast raised up certain hills in me heretofore, by which I might have stood safe, from these inundations of sin ... and to the top of all these hills, thou has brought me heretofore; but this Deluge, this inundation, is got above all my Hills; and I have sinned and sinned, and multiplied sin to sin, after all these thy assistances against sin, and where is there water enough to wash away this Deluge

---John Donne

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

---By Robert Frost 1874–1963

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

Confirmed Christian

"What a strength to a church is a confirmed Christian! He is a comfort to the sorrowful, and a help to the weak. Would you not like to be such? Confirmed believers are pillars in the house of our God. These are not carried away by every wind of doctrine, nor overthrown by sudden temptation. They are a great stay to others, and act as anchors in the time of church trouble. You who are beginning the holy life hardly dare to hope that you will become like them. But you need not fear; the good Lord will work in you as well as in them. One of these days you who are now a “babe” in Christ shall be a “father” in the church. Hope for this great thing; but hope for it as a gift of grace, and not as the wages of work, or as the product of your own energy."

---Charles H. Spurgeon

–The Lighting of the Sabbath Candles–

Come, Let us welcome the Sabbath.

May its radiance illumine our hearts as we kindle these tapers.

Light is the symbol of the divine. The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Light is the symbol of the divine in man. The spirit of man is the light of the Lord.

Light is the symbol of divine law. The commandment is a lamp and the law is a light.

I, the Lord, have set thee for a covenant of the people for a light unto the nations.

Therefore, in the spirit of our ancient tradition do we now kindle the Sabbath lights.

Shame, Guilt, Self-Hatred

From an interview with Author Andrew Klavan:

You mentioned that leftists are “secretly ashamed and guilt-ridden and self-hating.” Can you expand a bit on this? What is it, in the end, that is at the core of the leftist mindset and belief system?

Klavan: Shame and guilt and self-hatred are universal. Whether you chalk it up to original sin or to Oedipus or call it Jewish guilt or Catholic guilt or white guilt or black guilt, every single one of us knows he is not the person he was made to be. There are honest ways to confront that. You can kneel before God and pray for forgiveness and live in the joy of his love. Or you can drink heavily and make sardonic remarks until you destroy everyone you care about and then keel over dead – that’s honest too. But what a lot of people do is try to escape their sense of shame dishonestly by constructing elaborate moral frameworks that allow them to parade their virtue and their lavish repentance without any real inconvenience to themselves while simultaneously indulging in self-righteousness by condemning others for their impenitent evil. That’s the bad version of religion – the sort of religion Jesus came to dismantle. And that’s exactly the sort of religion leftism is: an elaborate system for hiding shame behind a cheap mask of virtue. That’s why they demonize any opposition. To them, we’re not just disagreeing with them, we’re threatening to tear off the mask of their virtue and reveal them to themselves. Which, without God or sufficient whiskey, would be unbearable.

Free Mind

The most powerful form of prayer, and the one which can virtually gain all things and which is the worthiest work of all, is that which flows from a free mind. The freer the mind is, the more powerful and worthy, the more useful, praiseworthy and perfect the prayer and the work become. A free mind can achieve all things. But what is a free mind?

A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or devotion and which does not seek its own interest in anything but is always immersed in God’s most precious will, having gone out of what is its own.
--Meister Eckhart(Talks of Instruction 2 in Davies, 1994)

Core of the Trinity

Do you want to know what goes on in the core of the Trinity?
I will tell you.

In the core of the Trinity
The Father laughs
and gives birth to the Son.
The Son laughs back at the Father
and gives birth to the Spirit.
The whole Trinity laughs
and gives birth to us.

Meister Eckhart

The Words of Prudence

“Hear the words of prudence, give heed unto her counsels, and store them in thine heart; her maxims are universal, and all the virtues lean upon her; she is the guide and the mistress of human life”

--Akhenaton, King of Egypt, 14th century BC

Treachery

“I'd be glad of a retaliation that wouldn't recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends: they wound those who resort to them, worse than their enemies.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

A Martyr Is

" A martyr is, he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom."
--T.S. Elliot

Death Becomes Life

“[The witch] would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe / The Magician's Nephew

The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.